


Grief and Guilt Are Four-Letter Words

by BloodMonastery



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Battle of Ostagar Aftermath, Big brother Alistair, Character Study, Developing Friendships, Family, Family Loss, Found Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Illustrated Work, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-02-29 04:41:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18771403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodMonastery/pseuds/BloodMonastery
Summary: On the first night while on the road to Lothering, Imani Cousland has difficulty sleeping.





	Grief and Guilt Are Four-Letter Words

**Author's Note:**

> i restarted DA:O and this sketch popped into my mind almost immediately after alistair, morrigan and the warden discussed morrigan's cooking abilities before leaving flemeth's hut. 
> 
> ... aaand then of course i had to turn it into angst, because this whole piece of time in the warden's life is very dark indeed, and i wanted to explore how my warden would be feeling and coping (or not coping) during it. also, alistair can whittle because i say so.
> 
> the art is mine, because i have no self control whatsoever

Lothering, Morrigan had said, was at least another day of travel away, and they might as well make camp for the night while there was still natural light to see by. As the sun set and the day began to give way to the dark shroud of night, she had started a fire and made them all a dinner of warm rabbit stew (which, she promised a suspicious Alistair, had none of the 50 native poisonous plants she knew of within it). Then, after following a few threads of uneasy conversation that ultimately lead nowhere, the three of them parted ways to find suitable spots to lay out their bedrolls around the fire.

Alistair drew first watch, and Keggle laid himself down by Imani’s feet. But despite her war hound’s comforting presence, Imani could not sleep. Every time she closed her eyes to attempt at rest, her quiet mind opened the floodgates to grief, fear, and sometimes worse. 

This was not the first night of sleeplessness since the hours of her parents’s deaths, but it was perhaps one of the more difficult ones.

Everyone at Ostagar, slaughtered and consumed or else dragged beneath the earth -- Fergus too, she was almost sure -- and Imani had felt the archdemon’s glee after its horde’s success. She tossed and turned on her bedroll, and then sat up and drew her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. Keggle stirred, and she smiled wanly at him. It wasn’t so much that she was afraid, though there was plenty of reason to be. But no, this heavy feeling creeping up around her heart was different. It weighed on her chest, compressing her lungs and making every breath feel like its own battle. She wasn’t sure what to call it.

While Imani slogged through the mire of her thoughts, Keggle crawled closer to her and laid himself down over her feet with a sigh. Imani looked down at him, then reached out and stroked his wide head. This, at least, was familiar. “Good boy,” she whispered to him. Keggle looked up into her face and then peacefully closed his eyes.

For the first time in the hours since she’d lied down, Imani looked around herself.

The Wilds were quiet, and the moons glimmered sadly from high up above. Across the fire, Morrigan appeared to be fast asleep on her bedroll with her twisted staff clutched tight in her hand, even in rest. Imani somehow wasn’t surprised. To her left and a little ways away, Alistair was sitting in the grass with his back to her, looking down at something in his lap. Imani could hear the very quiet sound of a whittling knife.

On a whim, Imani shifted her feet out from under Keggle and stood, walked over and hovered hesitantly, until Alistair noticed and lowered his hands. He offered her a smile that was only a _little_ too strained to qualify as “warm”. She thought of turning around and going back to her bedroll, but the pain and understanding in his eyes was a cove of comfort, drawing her closer like a ship on rough waters. She sat beside him in the dewy grass, and they both looked out into the trees as the fire slowly died down into embers behind their backs.

The silence was palpable between them.

She wanted to ask about the little wooden humanoid shape that he had started whittling again after a pause, but it was as if her voice had gone somewhere deep inside her, irrecoverable. She hadn’t told him about her family and what had been done to them when he had asked about her home, and it was eating away at her insides like bubbling, frothing acid. She did not want pity, from Alistair or anyone else, but the weight of her family’s fate was enormous on her chest, making it hard to breathe whenever she let her guard down. She wanted to apologize, she wanted to crack a joke, she wanted to say so, so many things.

All of this pressed heavy in the space between her tongue and teeth, but she could not find the words.

“Alistair…”

He hummed questioningly in response, and looked down at her by his side, his hands stilling one more time.

Imani struggled with her burden for a few long moments, and hugged her knees to her chest again. She could feel Alistair watching her. “I…” Her treacherous voice wavered, and tears welled between her eyelashes, threatening to spill over as the same unnamed emotion rose in her chest and threatened to drown her. Distantly, she saw Alistair lift his arm from the corner of her eye, and she leaned stiffly into his side, sniffling in vain. Thankfully, mercifully, Alistair didn’t speak or make a sound. He simply squeezed her by the shoulders, like Fergus used to. Imani’s heart didn’t feel any lighter, but she felt that maybe, she could carry it a little easier. For a little while.

When was the last time she had cried in someone’s arms? She couldn’t remember.

The two of them were the last Grey Wardens of Ferelden. They had lost so much in so little time. But, Imani thanked the Maker, they somehow still had each other.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to [josh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoshTheWitch) for beta-reading! (go read his works too!) 
> 
> help me out with a [coffee donation](https://ko-fi.com/A7364S4D)!


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